How the fitbit got me to walk more and be part of society again

The fitbit might be yet another trendy fitness gadget, but it's one that has …

I am a fitness gadget freak. I'm into anything that will help me track, optimize, and analyze my activity stats—that's why I reviewed the Withings Wi-Fi scale and the BodyMedia FIT, and I'm a regular user of RunKeeper, Nike+, and a plethora of other data-driven fitness apps. But rarely do these gadgets and apps actually inspire me to try and beat my previous stats; usually I just use them to track my already planned activity so that I can adjust my own expectations.

This is not the case with the fitbit—or in my case, the fitbit ultra. Given to me as a gift this last January, the "ultra" version of the fitness tracker has been on the market since October of 2011. The most basic element of the fitbit ultra is that it tracks your steps like a pedometer, but it can do a handful of other things: track the number of floors you've climbed, measure your sleep activity, and even display motivational phrases. (Don't laugh—I thought it was campy, too, until my fitbit kept greeting me every day with phrases like "VAMOS JACQUI.") The device can sync your data wirelessly through a USB dock plugged into your computer, so you only have to take it off to charge the battery maybe once a week or so.

Here's where things get personal. As someone who works from home, it's sometimes easy to delude myself into thinking I'm getting the same level of everyday, non-exercise activity as everyone else. But it's not true at all; people who commute to work (whether by foot, bike, public transit, or even car) do end up taking more steps in a day than someone who doesn't have to commute. Walking to and from your car or the subway, walking around your office, going with coworkers to lunch, etc.—all these things add up, and these are things that (generally speaking) a telecommuter doesn't do nearly as often. And those steps you're missing out on can add up.

I always knew this in the back of my head, but my fitbit ultra made this painful fact quite obvious. Because fitbit's website allows you to be friends with other fitbit users and see their stats, I quickly learned that seemingly everyone else on earth takes more steps on an average day than me unless I made explicit efforts to go out of my way to walk more. Many of my nondriving friends here in Chicago tend to take an average of 8,000 to 12,000 steps in a day (as of this writing, my top friend takes an average of 13,000 steps in a day!), and even my driving friends in other cities still seem to take between 6,000 and 8,000. When I began looking at my step stats via the fitbit ultra, I discovered that an average workday for me usually involved between 1,500 and 3,000 steps. On a day when I work and then run several miles, I might make it up to an exciting 5,000. Clearly, the whole working-from-home thing is keeping me quite sedentary even when you add in my running schedule.

That must be the point, then, of the fitbit website's leaderboards and badges: to motivate you to do more and top your friends. And although I'm well aware that I don't need a $99 gadget in order to force myself to take more steps, I must admit that the device and its accompanying website does work for me. Seeing all my friends constantly top me in steps has motivated me to make an extra effort to leave the house more and walk to more places. Things that I wouldn't normally do if I didn't have a number constantly being thrown in my face to show how few steps I've taken that day. On my non-running days, I now take very long walks too. And it's all to juice my own stats.

Now, anytime I set out to go somewhere, my mindset is, "this will definitely rack up the steps on the fitbit." If I forget my fitbit at home, I curse myself for practically the entire day—after all, the day's steps won't "count!" If I end up having to take my bike instead of walking somewhere, I feel mildly annoyed too. Sure, it's activity, but will it add to my step count? Didn't think so.

In the three months I've had my fitbit ultra, this single piece of motivation has helped me up my daily average to almost 6,500 steps—still much lower than most of my friends, but probably more than double what my daily average was when I first started using it. And aside from forcing me to be more active, this has benefitted me in other ways too: I get out more, get more sun and fresh air, see more real human beings in the flesh, and generally feel like more of a real member of society than the cave-dwelling nerd that I apparently was before. On one recent Friday, I somehow made it up to almost 19,000 steps!

One could argue that a standard pedometer, which can be had for as low as a few dollars from Amazon, could offer me the same level of data. That is indeed true, aesthetics aside. But then how would I easily compare myself against the people I know and use their achievements as motivation for my own? I'm very happy to have received my fitbit ultra, and I hope to never be apart from it again. If only it could charge wirelessly, I'd never have to take it off.

Now, anytime I set out to go somewhere, my mindset is, "this will definitely rack up the steps on the fitbit." If I forget my fitbit at home, I curse myself for practically the entire day—after all, the day's steps won't "count!" If I end up having to take my bike instead of walking somewhere, I feel mildly annoyed too. Sure, it's activity, but will it add to my step count? Didn't think so.

Nice article, but how does it, y'know, work. Where's the in-depth technical analysis? Or even a cursory analysis for that matter. What if you don't want to use their app (or you're a linux person, or they go out of business and their site disappears)? Can you export the data somehow? What if they decide to start charging for their web site?

1. You don't have an alarm clock?2. You don't check the weather?3. You don't answer the phone when it's ringing?4. You don't glance at clocks, watches, phones or ipods to know what time it is?5. You have a job without a schedule, email or time tracking system?6. You never check the odometer or speedometer on a car? Or consult a bus or train schedule?

Whether it was technically electronic or not, we have had time and distance tools ruling our lives in Western civilization for over a thousand years. They are tools that make us more efficient as people and as a society.

Counting steps is a far more valuable and flexible dynamic, than say, oil change intervals or punching a clock at work, where there is little choice involved. Just a thought.

I really considered Fitbit when it first came out but was only interested in the exercise tracking.

I can't see myself entering what I ate every day. Too tedious. Even with Evernote Food, I will enter minimal notes if any, just take pictures.

But yeah, the notion of accumulating life metadata is kind of interesting.

I carry iPod Nanos with me all the time, have the pedometer on. But their horrible web site makes checking my stats pointless. Better if that data was in a smart phone app that I could browse (still sync my Nano, even though uploading the Nike Plus data can be a PITA sometimes).

Would be more interested in tracking actual distance. Nike Plus sensor does that when I run but the problem is that I have to play tracks while doing it, whereas the pedometer feature is always on, whether you're playing something or not.

On photo walks, I've used it but when I stop for a few minutes to take pictures, it'll tell you to keep moving, so I just track the steps data.

Fitbit does have an iOS app, so I'll check that out, see if it makes browsing the data useful and motivational.

I got the fitbit for my wife and I last Christmas in order to track sleeping patterns (my wife complains about getting little sleep due to our young children so I thought being able to quantify it might satisfy her and be a means to resolving the issue and tracking improvement). We've since established that (following a sleep study) I suffer from moderate verging on severe sleep apnea -- I actually wore my fitbit during the sleep study and it noticed relatively few of the events that were noted during monitoring. I still manage to get 95%+ sleep efficiency most nights according to the fitbit. I intend to change it to the more sensitive setting to see if there is any marked change in recognizing the sleep apnea events that rouse me during my sleep.

When I ride a bike I'm only interested in the total distance and my average speed. All the other measurements are pure nonsense to me. Why people need such complex gadgets to be motivated to exercise? Find an activity that you enjoy and you won't need gadgets to tell you what to do.

It uses a Nordic ANT SOC with a 3-axis accelerometer. Base station is another ANT chip with a USB interface. Tracking unit has a rechargeable lithium polymer battery that is good for about a week. Any time the tracking device gets near a base station it will sync to the cloud; the base stations aren't locked to specific devices. Sync is once every 15 minutes to save power. Linux software is called libfitbit and it is on github,

There really isn't much to the device. Just stick it in your pocket and forget about it until you get an email that the battery is low. It will use the radio to upload data any time you are near a base station.

Use your browser or phone to look at the data. Note the pathetically low amount of exercise you are doing and use that as motivation to do more.

Does it work on treadmills, step climbers or gym cycles? Yes, but it can't really tell them apart. It measures the speed and distance of the steps and provides an estimate of calories burned. You can use the logging section on the web site to specifically identify the workout types. It doesn't record weight lifting, but you can also log that manually.

It is supposed to be water resistant. If you are worried just put it in a plastic bag. $99 is not too expensive to replace if you ruin it in the washing machine.

There is much more to the device than a basic pedometer. The accelerations are uploaded to the web site where they add in your weight and height to estimate calories consumed based on the intensity of the the motion. For example a pedometer can't detect altitude changes. Pedometer thinks that walking 1000 steps and climbing 1000 stairs are equivalent. Do each and then tell me if they are the same.

Does it work on treadmills, step climbers or gym cycles? Yes, but it can't really tell them apart.

Step-climbing machines aren't tracked, because the Fitbit uses an altimeter for that.

Alfa_Spider wrote:

We've since established that (following a sleep study) I suffer from moderate verging on severe sleep apnea -- I actually wore my fitbit during the sleep study and it noticed relatively few of the events that were noted during monitoring. I still manage to get 95%+ sleep efficiency most nights according to the fitbit. I intend to change it to the more sensitive setting to see if there is any marked change in recognizing the sleep apnea events that rouse me during my sleep.

This is really dangerous. Sleep apnea events don't "rouse you from your sleep", they just ruin sleep quality and put a ton of pressure on your cardiovascular system. The Fitbit is in no way sensitive enough to monitor sleep apnea. See a doctor and get treated properly, either with an oral appliance or a CPAP machine.

I find the Fitbit sleep features interesting and useful for tracking long-term sleep duration, and to a lesser extent times of day, but the sleep quality metrics are very, very rough.

Step-climbing machines track as if you were on a treadmill. You can manually flag it as "Stair-treadmill ergometer, general" which will better estimate the calories. It won't show in the dashboard as floors climbed since that one requires altitude change.

Between the fitbit itself, and the food tracking abilities of the website, I lost about 30lbs in 3 months (from about 250lbs.)

The food tracking was great, I could get a pretty good number of the intake of cals. The fitbit was pretty good at tracking my cal output. I targets a 2000 to 2500 cal intake and a output of 3000 cal a day.

It's an interesting device, but as most of my excersize is on a bike the lack of GPS distance calculations makes it kinda worthless. It uses the pedometer count and a stride length to determine distance.

And a heart rate sensor would be nice while excersizing outside of walking-type excersizes.

I am thinking about a Motoactv, though. Anyone have experience with them? Or could we convince Ars to review?

You can tag a start and stop time, then on the website, it will show these time periods. They you can then select the activity you were doing and it will show an approximate cals burned. Or, if you know the cals burned from an exercise machine, you can enter that directly.

As for water, my has been through the wash a few times.

wco81 wrote:

Does it work on treadmills, step climbers or gym cycles?

How does it hold up to intense exercise? Is it water resistant from the persperation?

Does it work on treadmills, step climbers or gym cycles? Yes, but it can't really tell them apart.

Step-climbing machines aren't tracked, because the Fitbit uses an altimeter for that.

Alfa_Spider wrote:

We've since established that (following a sleep study) I suffer from moderate verging on severe sleep apnea -- I actually wore my fitbit during the sleep study and it noticed relatively few of the events that were noted during monitoring. I still manage to get 95%+ sleep efficiency most nights according to the fitbit. I intend to change it to the more sensitive setting to see if there is any marked change in recognizing the sleep apnea events that rouse me during my sleep.

This is really dangerous. Sleep apnea events don't "rouse you from your sleep", they just ruin sleep quality and put a ton of pressure on your cardiovascular system. The Fitbit is in no way sensitive enough to monitor sleep apnea. See a doctor and get treated properly, either with an oral appliance or a CPAP machine.

I find the Fitbit sleep features interesting and useful for tracking long-term sleep duration, and to a lesser extent times of day, but the sleep quality metrics are very, very rough.

Used the CPAP for a week following the sleep study. Couldn't bear it. I'm seeing the ENT to determine other possible solutions like some sort of mouth guard.

I'm not too concerned about tracking calories. I just want minimal data entry so I won't be logging my meals. My iPod Nano pedometer is not too good on treadmills or on stair climbers, missing a lot of steps. The Nike Plus sensor is pretty good with distance run on the treadmill though.

So can you get a lot of perspiration on it (like if I clip it to the elastic waistband of shorts for running or playing hoops) and then rinse it off?

Does the iOS app. show like weeks or months of data? The Nike Plus site is really a piss-poor Flash site which won't even load half the time.

Good little product but I find more satisfaction with the build in pedometer on my 3DS! As an avid video game player, how could I not find motivation to walk with that thing!? It gives you coins to use in games for crying out loud! What other motivation would any other gamer need! And it also keeps track of your steps very nicely!

Good little product but I find more satisfaction with the build in pedometer on my 3DS! As an avid video game player, how could I not find motivation to walk with that thing!? It gives you coins to use in games for crying out loud! What other motivation would any other gamer need! And it also keeps track of your steps very nicely!

This inspires me to buy a $3 pedometer on amazon and compare numbers to those quoted in the article.

I bought a slightly pricier step counter from a drug store, with a 7 day memory. Activity for the past week is all the data tracking I really need. What motivates me most is the fact that I own a very active 3 year old Boxer. If my daily walk with him is less than 6K steps (about an hour) I feel like I'm slacking.

Greggman, I was wondering whether Fitbit would be motivating for non-competitive folks. I suppose it is motivating or could be motivating through different mechanisms. My wife, father-in-law and I got fitbits in late Feb of this year. We are all competitive and there is no question we walked more steps as a result. I was also in active weight loss and believed there was a correlation between high step count and weight loss. So I was always trying to make sure I was over 10k steps. I'm now maintaining my weight loss and concerned I may drift back over time. The Fitbit record, I hope will keep it clear how my activity level has been. The fact that Fitbit logs my steps by just walking past my Mac makes a big difference to me for long term tracking. Even with a 7 day pedometer, I'd still have to record the data if I wanted a log, and I might not do that. I also weigh myself daily and enter that into Myfitnesspal.

'Now, anytime I set out to go somewhere, my mindset is, "this will definitely rack up the steps on the fitbit."'

I think this is the single most-important takeaway from the whole piece. It's easy to find yourself gradually nudged into a more sedentary lifestyle, forced by work and personal time levies into ignoring the bigger picture of your life. Obviously, that minimizes your survival potential so anything which forces your attention back to taking care of yourself is as valuable an addition as you can make in your life.

I only take exception to the implied marginalization of your bike's efficacy. It, unlike running, is a zero-impact exercise tool which can at once be the most energy-efficient method of transporting yourself and also the source of a *brutal* workout should you so choose, or anything in between.